Zen's Privacy Policy stinks.

[surf1der]

I've been following new EULA discussions on the Steam forums and Barbie gave a link for Zen's privacy policy http://blog.zenstudios.com/privacy_policy.html. I posted this in the iOS forum because a lot of this looks like it is directed at the mobile platform. I'm not sure why Zen feels the need to push ads into their premium apps. Right now I've only been seeing Castlestorm ads within the Zen Pinball app but even that I don't like. I have probably spent close to $200 on Zen games across multiple platforms. I don't need or want ads in premium games. You don't need to collect or store geo-location data, you don't need to collect my personal data for targeted ads, and you don't need to give or sell my data to 3rd parties. I understand that cookies are useful in some situations like personalizing you views on websites and simplifying logins, but you should not be collecting any personal data or tracking anything. The whole thing stinks. I don't want to have to manually opt out of targeted ads. I just want to play some pinball games without worrying about what Zen is doing with my personal data. I'll still play pinball on Steam but I'm done buying anything for mobile and I'm deleting my Zen Pinball app.

[BarbieBobomb]

This is a blanket policy. There will never be ads in premium games, however there will be ads in F2P games, which can always be turned off by purchasing the game (examples of this are CastleStorm on mobile or the Win8 version of Pinball FX2).

[surf1der]

And what about my personal information? I don't use social media largely because I like my privacy so I know you haven't collected any personal data from that. But I know I gave you my name, email address and home address after winning a tournament. And I'm not sure what info you get when I make purchases through Steam, the app store, or PSN. But according to your privacy policy you can freely give out that info to 3rd parties and that you are not liable for anything those 3rd parties might do with that data. I'm not saying you would but you could. I know this is boilererplate stuff for large companies to do. I mean people are up in arms about government data collection activities but I worry more about the info that we freely allow companies to collect and disseminate. I just didn't expect to have to worry about this stuff when I want to buy and play some pinball games. And collecting geo-location data is just creepy. I had to check my ios settings to see if Zen Pinball was using location services. It wasn't but I was annoyed that I even had to check.

[BarbieBobomb]

And what about my personal information? I don't use social media largely because I like my privacy so I know you haven't collected any personal data from that. But I know I gave you my name, email address and home address after winning a tournament. And I'm not sure what info you get when I make purchases through Steam, the app store, or PSN. But according to your privacy policy you can freely give out that info to 3rd parties and that you are not liable for anything those 3rd parties might do with that data. I'm not saying you would but you could. I know this is boilererplate stuff for large companies to do. I mean people are up in arms about government data collection activities but I worry more about the info that we freely allow companies to collect and disseminate. I just didn't expect to have to worry about this stuff when I want to buy and play some pinball games. And collecting geo-location data is just creepy. I had to check my ios settings to see if Zen Pinball was using location services. It wasn't but I was annoyed that I even had to check.

For the tournament stuff, once I send the prizes, I don't even keep the names or addresses, I have no use for that. We can't really see much in the way of Steam/App Store/PSN purchases since we don't have access to player transaction/account info.